Review of a Role 2 in Afghanistan: Understanding the Data on Medical and Surgical Volumes in a Deployed Setting

The U.S. forward military surgical assets have deployed throughout the Iraq and Afghanistan theaters of operations to maintain surgical support for injured service members in compliance with the "golden hour" as specified in the Gates Memorandum. The support of evacuation times of less than 60 minutes to a surgical capability has resulted in smaller surgical teams being deployed to an increased number of locations. Over the last 5 years, the combat trauma patient encounters have decreased. Although some Role 2 medical treatment facilities (MTFs) maintain a medical mission, most of them are set up to provide trauma care. The largest and busiest Role 2 MTF is located near Kabul and serves the NATO population. The aims of this review are to examine the epidemiological data of the largest Role 2 MTF in theater, to examine damage control surgical capability optimization in a facility with a largely medical mission, and to analyze what this may mean in the context of surgical skill atrophy.

As part of a performance improvement project, a retrospective review of prospectively collected data at the Hamid Karzai NATO Role 2 MTF was conducted. Four years of clinical and epidemiological data were reviewed. Independent source verification of the records was conducted by validating records via comparison to the ancillary services' records. When available, data on other MTFs in Afghanistan were used for comparison. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze demographics, evacuations, surgeries, and admissions.

Over the studied period, 0.7% of patients were seen for battle injuries. The average number of patients seen was 636 per month with 184 per month in 2016 and a steady increase to 805 per month in 2019. The operative volume was a mean of 2.8 surgeries per month with a median of 2 surgeries per month (orthopedic and general surgery combined). Other Role 2 facilities were on average seeing even fewer operative patients, although there were some treating more operative patients. From available data, no other Role 2 MTFs were treating close to as many total patients (all types combined). The two Role 3 facilities evaluated saw significantly more operative patients at an average of 53 surgeries per month.

The ratio of operative cases per surgeon is substantially higher at these Role 3 facilities, when compared to Role 2 facilities, although still significantly lower than would be expected at an U.S. Level 1 trauma center. This is consistent with other larger epidemiological studies on forward MTF workload. The vast majority of patient care is related to treatment of disease and preventative medicine. Only 0.7% of the large volume of patient visits evaluated were for battle injuries. There is a scarcity of both surgical and trauma patients, with a more pronounced reduction at Role 2 compared to Role 3 facilities. This is especially evident here with a facility that has such a large patient population but low trauma or surgical patient volume. Sustaining trauma and surgical skills for both surgeons and trauma teams with a paucity of trauma patients is a significant concern.